“Russia scrapped a 5 percent import duty on Apple Inc.’s iPad after classifying it as a computer rather than a GPS-navigation device, Vedomosti reported, citing an order by the country’s customs service,” Ilya Khrennikov reports for Bloomberg.

Yes, because murdering your opponents, and having an ex (?) KGB dictator.. I mean “president” running your country is *exactly* the same as having people collect together to pool their money to support their cause…

There are clearly different ways to take the freedom and fairness out of elections. When our Supreme Court decided that it is perfectly legal for large multinational corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to support their political candidates, it seems clear that “we the people” lost in the freedom and fairness departments. This is clearly not the same as controlling the outcome of elections by murdering or emprisoning opponents, but the result is unfortunitely usually the same. “Nukeman” is right, money talks, and PACs on both the left and right do tend to walk all over the “Freedom and Fairness” of our elections in every way that their money can buy.

Oh, as an aside, apparently for the politically charged MDN crowd, the iPad should be classified as a computer, not just a GPS.

The original comment was about “free & fair”, so try to stick with that. Besides, Bush Sr. was ex. CIA director as well, so lets see you logically extend your assertion in this case. That is, IF you can think logically!

Actually, it worked more like “You should all live in a commune, while I get a dacha at the lake and car you can never afford.” Leaders that put themselves at the front of the line soon lose sight of everyone else.

Only in America can bribery be called free speech. In most of the developed world, where democracies are truly free (rather than single- or two-party dictatorships), giving money to elected officials in any shape or form is considered corruption and is against the law (as well as common sense). In America, even the smallest of obstacles to this type of corruption have been removed and those with massive amounts of money can obtain massive amounts of controlling political power. They continue to successfully explain this away with the “freedom of speech” canard, and most amazingly, large parts of the population genuinely believe that this is in fact perfectly fine.

In most societies of the world (including America), corruption (as a concept) is despised. It is one of the most blatant, transparent breaches of universal standards of ethics. In most of the developing world, it is one of the biggest problems in the society. The developed world has more-or-less successfully dealt with it, putting in place laws that require transparency, and consistently punish perpetrators. America is a shining exception to this, with corruption on the highest (and most damaging) level perfectly legal, obvious, rampant, blatant and miraculously explained away as free speech. As a foreigner, I’ve always been baffled by this. I’d love to hear a rational, non-political explanation why is bribery of elected officials (or those running for office) actually good.

When Maher said that he was only talking about Ann Coulter. No apology necessary.

Corporate money is not “the people” pooling their money to assert a common position. In broadly held companies, the voice of the shareholder is never considered or espoused. It’s just management trying to ensure the power structure doesn’t change so their rice bowls are protected.

OBTW, quoting Mitt Romney as if he had something insightful to say is just silly, but in this case he’s closer that the Supreme Court. I favor the NASCAR approach. Just wear their sponsors logos on their suits, so everyone knows who bought them.

At least he didn’t have to count all the hanging chads or all the chads that were intentional/unintentional. And most importantly he didn’t have certain minorities in his population barred or turned away from voting. You only think you live in a democracy. Actually repubes want us to think we live in a democracy but would be quite happy circumventing democratic principles as long as a repube is put in power.

After trying to pronounce that the way an English speaker would, it occurred to me that what you may have attempted to say is до свидания (phonetic approximation in English: doh svedunya), meaning good bye. Still not sure what you meant by it.

Unlike the dumb Brazilians who erect high tariff walls to impoverish their own citizens who consume the latest tech, Russia has seen the light that advanced tablet computing is suitable for the masses and will serve to enlighten them while the dumb Brazilians continue to live in the dark ages.